4 ways chewing gum is good for you

Since peaking in 2009, U.S. gum sales have fallen 11 percent to $3.71 billion last year, according to market researcher Euromonitor International, displaced by sales of mints, chocolate and other candies. Over the next five years, Euromonitor projects gum sales will drop another 4 percent to $3.56 billion.

Which hardly sounds like a national health crisis, and it will certainly make your mother, who was tired of all that cracking, popping and chomping, happy.

But here’s something to chew on: Gum can be good for your health.

Here are four ways:

Teeth: Chewing sugarless gum for 20 minutes following meals may be just what the dentist ordered to help prevent tooth decay. According to the American Dental Association, which places a seal on gum that meets its standards, chewing gum encourages saliva production, which washes away acids created by the bacteria in plaque. Those acids can break down tooth enamel, setting you up for decay. Saliva also delivers extra calcium and phosphate to strengthen the enamel of your teeth. Types of gums that carry the ADA seal use non-cavity-causing sweeteners, such as aspartame, sorbitol or mannitol.

Weight: Gum can also curb your appetite, according to a 2009 study by the University of Rhode Island. When healthy adult study subjects chewed gum for one hour in the morning (three 20-minute gum-chewing sessions), they consumed 67 fewer calories at lunch and did not make up for it by pigging out later in the day. Why? According to the University of Rhode Island study, “nerves in the muscles of the jaw are stimulated by the motion of chewing and send signals to the appetite section of the brain that is linked to satiety, which may explain why the act of chewing might help to reduce hunger.”

It should be noted that the study was supported by a $25,000 research award from the Wrigley Science Institute (yes, that Wrigley) although people have long suspected that a busy jaw won’t have time to crave crunching on that bag of Cheez-Its.

Memory: A recent study from Cardiff University and published in last month’s British Journal of Psychology suggested chewing gum can help you focus longer on tasks that require constant attention.

“It’s been well established by previous research that chewing gum can benefit some areas of cognition,” Kate Morgan, author of the study explained in a news release. “In our study we focused on an audio task that involved short-term memory recall to see if chewing gum would improve concentration; especially in the latter stages of the task.”

Previous research has shown that chewing gum can improve concentration in visual memory tasks.

“Interestingly participants who didn’t chew gum performed slightly better at the beginning of the task but were overtaken by the end,” Morgan said in the release. “This suggests that chewing gum helps us focus on tasks that require continuous monitoring over a longer amount of time.”

According to discovery.com, the study “builds on evidence from previous research that shows benefits of chewing gum, such as increased blood flow to the frontal-temporal brain regions.”

Stress: It may feel like you need a glass of wine when your 5-year-old’s effort to pour his own milk leaves you wading into a lake of dairy on your kitchen floor, but you just need to find the nearest pack of Trident. According to a report from Wrigley (which houses information under the website gumisgood.com), “in June 2006, an online self-perception research study was conducted to determine whether chewing gum can make gum chewers feel less stressed. Overall, this study provides evidence that among heavy gum chewers (defined as those who chewed in the past week, chewed at least four days per week and chewed 11 pieces per week), chewing gum reduced stress while abstaining from chewing gum increased stress.” Fifty-six percent of study participants agreed with the statement that “chewing gum helps me cope with everyday stress.”

That didn’t include the stress it put on the participants’ mothers, who tend to tire of all that impolite chomping.

They’ve got the sealThe American Dental Association puts a seal on sugar-free gum it recommends as a means of fighting cavities. Here are the recommended brands. Note that all are the sugar-free versions of the products:

Dentyne Ice

Stride

Trident

Wrigley’s Extra

Wrigley’s Orbit

Wrigley’s Orbit for Kids

Ice Breakers Ice Cubes

Here are some links for xylitol gum and why this is the one you should be chewing